Archive for December, 2007
I wear contact lenses. I’ve worn them since high school, and never have trouble with them. Guess that’s why I end up taking them for granted. I’ve never even lost one in the past… well, quite a number of years.
Annual eye exams are things that usually slide down on my list of things to do when I’m busy, so I haven’t been to the eye doctor in… well, quite a long time. I know that there is a useful life for contacts. And, now I know how to tell when it’s time to replace them.
One way to tell, for gas-permeable lenses, is when you turn your head quickly and your contact pops out of your eye. I now know that is a sure indication that you’ve had the contacts too long.
I came to this understanding one day in the grocery. I was looking at the bread in the display racks, turned my head quickly and my contact popped out. Not to worry. I removed it from its perch on my cheek and was prepared to find the ladies and put it back in my eye.
That was a great plan, except then I dropped it. Since I never lose contacts, I didn’t have any spares, so I had to find the deserter. I caught the attention of one of the bakers, and asked her to join me at the display case. She was puzzled and a bit annoyed, but she came.
I explained my predicament, and her face softened. We started a systematic search of the racks and the floor, being careful not to squish the contact in the process. Shortly, we were joined by another shopper. A second shopper stopped to ask jokingly if there was a reward being offered. So, we all looked, but we were having no luck.
Finally, another baker came around to the display case and lifted up a secret piece of the rack. There, underneath it, gleamed the contact lense.
As I turned to my search team to thank them, I heard a rousing round of applause coming from behind where we were standing. I turned to look, and found myself surrounded by a small crowd of cheering shoppers.
My team and I took our bows, I thanked everyone for their support and assistance, and we all went on our way.
The morale of the story? There are several:
- People in the grocery store are bored enough to find a contact search interesting.
- People are basically good eggs, and willing to help people in distress.
- If you wear contact lenses, don’t put off your eye exams.
Client Management: Getting the Right Price
· CommentsSince it’s so important to price homes well in this market, I was interested to see the promotion for a DVD that is designed to take you out of the position of haggling over price – with your prospective listing client!
The DVD is called Pricing Your Home to Sell, and was produced by David Knox. It is available through the NAR store. According to the description:
“This video has helped countless real estate agents, like you, turn “for sale” into “sold.” It provides answers to objections like:
• “Couldn’t we just try it for a couple of weeks?”
• “We can always come down.”
• “They can always make an offer.”
I’m sure you’ve all heard objections like those. And, if this DVD could overcome that type of objection, and even help if you need to ask for a price adjustment, it could be well worth the investment.
Why bother with a DVD – why not just make the case yourself? For a number of reasons:
- When you’re listing a home, very often you don’t have a long-term relationship with the home seller, so the trust in your relationship hasn’t had time to develop
- It always helps to have a second opinion, and you certainly don’t want your prospect getting one from another agent
- Many people respond better to something visual than spoken
- If someone took the time to make a professional DVD on a topic, it may carry more weight than just words
- It takes you out of the position of starting out your relationship with the seller by trying to “talk them into something”
- It differentiates you from your competitors who may 1) go along with an unrealistic price just to get the listing (making you look like you didn’t know what you were talking about), or 2) not have as professional a presentation to address the pricing issue
If anyone has seen or used this DVD, please let us know what your experience has been! And, don’t forget to respond to the poll on Internet Marketing in the left hand column of this blog.
If you look at the poll results so far, there are just about as many people getting a lot of their business from the Internet as there are those getting very little. We need more responses, though, and it only takes a second. . .
Do-It-Yourself-SEO: Part 2
· CommentsUse this link to see all the posts in this series: Do-It-Yourself SEO.
SEO: Do-It-Yourself or Hire an Expert?
Doing your own SEO is certainly possible if you have the time and inclination. Here are the challenges:
- Learning what needs to be done
- Devoting time to do SEO
- Continuing SEO activities on an on-going basis
Learning What Needs to be Done
When you’re learning about SEO, make sure you’re learning “White Hat” SEO, as opposed to “Black Hat” SEO. White Hat SEO refers to using techniques that don’t try to trick the search engines into ranking your site. These techniques follow the webmaster guidelines published by the search engines.
Here are the guidelines for three of the search engines, and there are other helpful links on the pages, too:
- Google Webmaster Guidelines
- Matt Cutts Blog - Matt Cutts works for Google and often blogs about SEO issues
- Yahoo
MSN
Black Hat SEO refers to using techniques that may well cause your site to catapult to the top of search engine rankings for a brief time, but over the long haul, will cause your site to be penalized or even banished from the search engines altogether.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the search engines don’t publish their ranking algorithms. They provide guidelines and some assistance like Matt Cutts’ blog. As a result, webmasters and SEO experts must interpret the guidelines and draw conclusions based on their experience.
As you can imagine, information on what works and what doesn’t sometimes starts sounding like the 10 blind men trying to describe an elephant. I think the best advice for someone starting out learning SEO is to read everything you can, and look for trends. There are some things almost everyone agrees on, and those are the things I’d recommend you pay most attention to.
Doing SEO on a Regular Basis
This really speaks for itself. Once you know what you need to do, you can’t do it all at once. By definition, SEO needs to take place consistently over a period of time. So, plan on setting aside time each week, even after your site’s ranking starts to improve.
Hiring an Expert
Naturally, I am biased because the services we provide are extremely effective and reasonably priced. Our clients work with us because they don’t have time to do SEO on a regular basis and/or the inclination to learn all there is to learn.
But since SEO is such a critical issue for most webmasters, there are all kinds of firms out there – some are very good at what they do and some are real charlatans out for a quick buck. So, there are some things to be aware of no matter who you want to hire:
- In my experience, SEO firms who place cold calls or send e-mails to webmasters aren’t the best ones to deal with.
- If an SEO firm cannot describe how they plan to improve your search engine ranking, they’re probably using Black Hat techniques.
- If an SEO firm tells you that they must have FTP access to your website to upload some new pages, be wary. Typically, the pages they want to add to your site aren’t seen by your visitors. If that is the case, they’re usually some type of “doorway” pages, or other types of pages that don’t fit into webmaster guidelines.
- If you are told that your site will appear at the top of Google within 48 hours, they aren’t an SEO firm. They’re probably doing a flat fee Pay-Per-Click service. While you may choose to do Pay-Per-Click to get some immediate traffic, keep in mind that you won’t be making a dent in your site’s long-term ranking capability.
- Make sure that the keyword phrases an SEO firm wants to use to optimize your site are valid. By valid, I mean that the terms have decent usage and not overwhelming competition. You don’t have to go after a term like Atlanta Real Estate, but you don’t want to be stuck with a phrase like New Homes for Sale in Atlanta Suburbs. It might be easy to rank for a phrase like that, but only because no one actually ever uses that term.
- Any SEO firm should be involved in obtaining incoming links for your site. Make sure those links will be from quality sites and not link farms.
Assuming that you are going to do your own SEO, the balance of this series will address the basics you need to know.
